Lady Gaga to appear in Launch My Line

Lady Gaga is one celebrity people just can’t stop talking about. I think we all tend to get very excited when the enigma that is Lady Gaga. The entertainer will be appearing on the Bravo show “Launch My Line.” As a performer who is not afraid to try daring and expressive clothing, some of the critiques Ms. Gaga is likely to make on the program should be interesting. The outfits that the contests are making have to be as much like what Lady Gaga would wear on stage. If it is not up to the liking of Lady Gaga, I am sure that she will not hesitate to tell the contests that in the most unique manner possible. It ought to be extravagant like many of the gowns that you happen to see her in, but of course with that unique Lady Gaga style.

The contests are likely to be challenged by whatever Lady Gaga throws their way. The people over at Bravo are certainly glad to have her on their network if only for a night due to the likely ratings bump and free publicity that she brings in.

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MTV News Extended Play: Lady Gaga

MTV News caught up with Lady Gaga in the midst of her Monster Ball Tour. Three more clips under the cut!

Is Gaga The Fame Monster?

Gaga’s U.K. Tour Will Be ‘Completely Different’

Gaga Is ‘Not A Character’

‘I Know I Am Out Of This World’

Lady Gaga’s Fans ‘Are The Most Brilliant In The World’

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Lady Gaga is using her pipes for pitches

Nothing has been as sticky. No other advert, print or video or Web, no tweet or blog, billboard or word of mouth, has so thoroughly knitted itself into my merchandise-buying neurons. I'm fully bought-in, invested. Ebola isn't as viral. My wallet is open and its tongue is hanging out.

My vote for Advertisement of the Year 2009 is Lady Gaga's video "Bad Romance," a five-minute self-exploitation film that sells booze, high-end audio gear and stiletto heels as hard as it rocks. Canny and cagey and completely engaged in the business of business, brand Gaga is the first white artist I can think of who has embraced aspirational, label materialism with the kind of gusto shown by hip-hop artists such as Kanye West and Jay Z.

Part of me hates to throw nitromethane into the Gaga fire. The 23-year-old dance-pop sibyl is such a work of entertainment engineering, the flywheel in an enormous piece of media-eating machinery, that giving her due as an artist brings with it a certain ruefulness, the sensation of being manipulated. Not that I begrudge her the millions in album sales or the inevitable mantel full of Grammys. The Lady's got pipes, for sure, and she plays a flaming piano in a flesh-colored rhinestone bodysuit as well as anyone since, say, Liberace. I also respect the fact that even though she came up as a piano prodigy, attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she has taught herself to dance like a pro. That can't be easy.

And, obviously, the club singles — "Paparazzi," "Poker Face" and "Just Dance" — are ferocious, brains-on-the-dance-floor Visigoths.

The next Madonna? We'll see. But at the moment it seems that Lady Gaga's innovations reside mostly on the business side of celebrity and that she is a disruptive technology all her own. There was a time, after all, when commercial considerations were regarded as fundamentally inartistic. Remember the fuss over Led Zeppelin's selling out its music to Cadillac, or the Beatles to Nike or U2 to, well, whomever? Only last year, critics wailed about the supposed loss of innocence in Michael Bay's GM-sponsored "Transformers." This month, Nielsen released — with appropriate tongue-clucking — its list of the top 10 shows with the highest number of product placements: No. 1 was "The Jay Leno Show."

Lady Gaga is so beyond any kind of embarrassment that she's made mercantilism its own aesthetic. In her previous video for "Love Game," a street tough swigs from a bottle of Campari as he watches Lady rut and grind (Campari, for when your evening plans call for rough sex on the subway). In the video for mega-hit "Poker Face," the card table is emblazoned with the logo for Bwin.com. She quaffs Neuro sports drink in the "Paparazzi" video; sports a Baby G watch in "Eh Eh (Nothing I Can Say)"; and wears Beat headphones by Dr. Dre (including a version of her own design) in at least a couple of videos.

All was prelude, however, to the "Bad Romance" video, which features placements for no less than 10 products: a black iPod; Philippe Starck Parrot wireless speakers; Nemiroff vodka; Gaga-designed Heartbeats earphones (via Dr. Dre); Carrera sunglasses; Nintendo Wii handsets; Hewlett-Packard Envy computers; a Burberry coat; those crazy, hobbling Alexander McQueen hyper-heels; and enough La Perla lingerie to choke an ox.

This isn't a music video so much as the QVC Channel you can dance to.

The narrative of the video — acknowledging that we kill to dissect — seems to be about the Lady Gaga character (wide-eyed and innocent, in a bathtub, Ivory soap pure and about as white) abducted by slavers, doped with vodka and put on auction in front of a bunch of tattooed, vaguely Russian-looking men, where she dances like a techno Salome. The atmosphere is superheated and oppressive, the barometric pressure looks to be about 1,000 psi. In the end, she's purchased by a man with a brass chin who beds her. But he didn't count on the incandescence of That We Call Gaga, and he spontaneously combusts. Bummer.

The temptation to deconstruct should be avoided. This is a video featuring a truly striking and beautiful woman strutting around in her skimpies to an epic club hit, surrounded by the most arresting art-house imagery the director (Francis Lawrence) and Lady Gaga's posse could dream up. The value to the product placers? How about more than 35 million views on YouTube since Nov. 10? If I worked at a Philippe Starck retail outlet I'd be stocking up on canned goods, bomb shelter-style.

In interviews, Lady Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta) wants to compare her Haus of Gaga — comprising her various business and creative interests — to Andy Warhol's art-making Factory, which is a bit of bad faith. Warhol's art reified ordinary, mass-market objects, such as the Campbell's soup can. Lady Gaga is name-checking luxury merchandise and being well paid for it. The only sound more penetrating than the beatbox is the deafening roar of cash registers.

What's so subversive about "Bad Romance" — and perhaps this is a reflection of the compromised times we live in — is that the art doesn't seem at all diminished by the business agenda. It's beautiful, it's dance-able, and it's exquisite advertising. I just wish my Alexander McQueen pumps fit better. The last stone of any church-state, art-commerce, virgin-whore wall has been toppled and — my God! — we don't miss the wall.

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GaGa Wisdom: Words from the Lady

Pop music critic Ann Powers is sharing tidbits from her recent, revealing interview with the primal force known as Lady Gaga leading up to her three sold-out performances at the Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live on Dec. 21-23. Check Pop & Hiss daily for another pearl from the girl. Today, she discusses the emotional evolution that led up to the writing of the eight new songs featured on the reissue of her bestselling album "The Fame" — the repackaged version is known as "The Fame Monster" — and how it influenced her elaborate touring production, the Monster Ball.

Lady Gaga on her emotional evolution: "I'm in a deeper, more compassionate place than where I was when I wrote 'The Fame.' The truth about 'The Fame' is that so much of myself as a woman is hinged on the idea that I can self-empower. I do that with my views and my passions and with the way I choose to carry myself, with the way that I treat other people, with the way that I operate from a place of, I don't care if you love me, I care if you love yourself.

"But it's meant to be this ironic juxtaposition in the Monster Ball. I talk endlessly about my fans and then I writhe around on the floor and say, 'Do you wanna [have sex with] me?' It's asking the question, 'What is it that we really love about stars?' If the beckoning question is always, 'Why don't you love me?,' there's something off about that."

Pop music critic Ann Powers is sharing tidbits from her recent, revealing interview with the primal force known as Lady Gaga leading up to her three sold-out performances at the Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live on Dec. 21-23. Check Pop & Hiss daily for another pearl from the girl.

Today, Gaga sheds light on the true meaning of her excellent new song "Dance in the Dark." Sit back — it's a long explanation.

"The record is about a girl who likes to have sex with the lights off, because she's embarrassed about her body. She doesn't want her man to see her naked. She will be free, and she will let her inner animal out, but only when the lights are out. She doesn't feel free without the moon. These lyrics are a way for me to talk about how I believe women and some men feel innately insecure about themselves all the time. It's not sometimes, it's not in adolescence, it's always.

"Also, I'm working with Viva Glam on MAC AIDS Fund stuff and the more I learn about AIDS and HIV…. most of the new infections are in women my age, and in women ages 53 to 64, older women who haven't had sex in a long time, and in a moment of passion are irresponsible and contract HIV, and women my age who think their boyfriend won't love them if they speak up. Condoms aren't female. They're making female condoms, but right now it's, "buy a Trojan" – it's for men. So everything's in a man's power, and women are taught to be receivers… It's just a very deluded way of looking at sex.

"I guess all of these new things entering my life are changing the way I view my purpose, but that song in particular is about me wanting to live — but also, the song isn't called 'Dance in the Light.' I'm not a gospel singer trying to cross people over. What I'm saying is, 'I get it. I feel you, I feel the same way, and it's OK.'

"I hope and pray that I can inspire some sort of change in people subliminally through the show. They're singing 'Dance in the Dark,' but they're dancing and they're free, they're letting it out. But the songs are not about freedom, they're about [the fact that] I get it. I feel the way you feel."

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Lady Gaga “Barbara Walters Interview”

Lady Gaga - Barbara Walters Interview!

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GaGa about women

Lady GaGa has had sex with women but has only ever been in love with men, she revealed in a new interview.

The pop icon appeared on US TV as a guest of Barbara Walters this week, where she asked about her private life.

She confirmed that international chart smash "Poker Face" was inspired by her fascination with same sex relationships.

"That's really what the song was all about - why when I was with my boyfriend was I fantasising about women?!", she told the chat show host.

When asked by Walters about her lesbian flings, she explained: "I've certainly had sexual relationships with women, yeah".

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Frank Talk with Lady Gaga - LA Times interview

Reporting from Boston – Almost immediately after she deposited herself in a corner booth at L’Espalier, the restaurant at Boston’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel on the December afternoon after the first American date of her Monster Ball tour, Lady Gaga made a confounding statement.

“I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else,” said the 23-year-old known to her mom (eating lunch nearby) as Stefani Germanotta. “I don’t see myself as an heir.”

Yet there she was, in a blond Hollywood bob and black tuxedo-bra combo much like the costumes Madonna wore 20 years ago, discussing a show that conjures the spirits of Michael Jackson, David Bowie and the punk-rock drag queens of downtown New York and promoting music — the newly expanded edition of her 2008 debut album, “The Fame,” greatly enriched by eight new songs and repackaged as “The Fame Monster” — that pays blatant homage to ABBA, Queen, Eurodisco and Marilyn Manson.

Gaga doesn’t care. She wants you to trace her references. ” John Lennon talked about how with every song he wrote, he was thinking of another artist,” she said, making a less expected connection to a pop deity.

She’s yet to attain the status of the Beatles, but in the ever-accelerating pop cycle, Gaga is a top sensation, and many people’s vote for the most exciting artist of 2009. “The Fame” has sold nearly 2 million copies in the U.S. and reportedly double that internationally; her album and the single “Poker Face” both made the top three on the year-end tally of top iTunes downloads.

“The Fame Monster” continues this sales sweep, but it also considerably advances Gaga’s artistic project with some of her strongest songs yet, including the earworm-infested “Bad Romance” and the sumptuously emotional ballad “Speechless.”

The world is responding. She’s made friends with Madonna, been interviewed by Barbara Walters and met the Queen of England at the annual Royal Variety Performance. The Monster Ball has sold out multiple nights in major cities including Los Angeles, where it comes to the Nokia Theater at L.A. Live for shows Dec. 21-23.

This is all happening not because Gaga is cute or takes off her clothes but because (to use one of her favorite words) she is a monster — a monster talent, that is, with a serious brain.

During nearly two hours of conversation, she not only reiterates her assertion of total originality but also finesses it until it’s both a philosophical stance about how constructing a persona from pop-cultural sources can be an expression of a person’s truth — à la those drag queens Gaga sincerely admires — and a bit of a feminist act.

“I’m getting the sense that you’re a little bit of a feminist, like I am, which is good,” she said. “I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little . . . In my opinion, women need and want someone to look up to that they feel have the full sense of who they are, and says, ‘I’m great.’ ”

Gaga’s casual use of the term “feminist” was interesting; like many female pop stars, she’s rejected the term in the past. But she’s evolving. She is growing “more compassionate,” she says, and focusing more on ideas of community, especially the one formed by her core fan base, a mix of gay men, bohemian kids and young women attracted by Gaga’s style and her singable melodies.

Grand declarations

Her new songs address serious themes like women’s shame about their bodies and the need for open communication in relationships; her often physically distorting costumes show that the pursuit of the feminine ideal is far from natural. Her commitment to confront the changing notion of what’s “natural” puts Gaga on the same road traveled by artists she admires, such as the photographer Cindy Sherman. Her frank talk about how female artists aren’t expected to write their own songs or about how young women are afraid to ask for what they need from their sexual partners inches her toward a new articulation of feminism.

“If you ask somebody where you see sexism in your life, all they think of is the old stuff,” said Nona Willis Aronowitz, co-author of the new book “Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism,” by phone. “Equal pay, that’s not really on their radar. Domestic violence and rape aren’t necessarily in the forefront. But you ask about double standards or restrictive gender roles, they don’t think of that as sexism; they think of that as the way it is. That’s kind of like what Lady Gaga is talking about.”

Gaga does view her music as a liberating force. “When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves,” she continued. “I don’t make it as a defense. I make it as, OK, guys, it’s been two years, and I’ve made a lot of music, and I know my greatness is individual. And I want every woman to be able to say that.”

This is one of Gaga’s gifts, maybe the one that most distinguishes her from the other talented women directing the pop zeitgeist right now, such as her recent collaborator Beyoncé, her fellow couture hound Rihanna or her rival in redefining blondness, Taylor Swift. Gaga makes outrageous declarations — which, when you break them down, actually make sense. And then she backs them up, not only through her now famously provocative interviews but in her videos, her collaborations with designers and artists, her live performances and those infernally catchy hits.

Upending genres

As good a game as she talks, Gaga’s real language is visual and, of course, musical. Discussing videos like the one for “Bad Romance,” which she says is about “how the entertainment industry can, in a metaphorical way, simulate human trafficking — products being sold, the woman perceived as a commodity,” or the Ace Bandage-adorned costume she wore at the American Music Awards, which she said was “meant to be feminine, healing, bondage gothic,” she sounds more like an art critic than an evolving club kid.

“It’s a feeling,” she says of the way she builds these little horror musicals. “There is a narrative, but the narrative isn’t nearly as important as the images are, sewn together.”

As for the songs that serve as the foundation for all of her other forms of expression, Gaga says she never wanted them to be anything but massive hits. “I don’t want to make niche-oriented music,” said the songwriter, who entered the music business writing hits for other artists, including Britney Spears. “I don’t like it! I don’t mean that to be in a rude way. But my taste is not there.”

At a time when pop genres are colliding and collapsing, Gaga is contributing to their downfall. She notes that “Boys Boys Boys,” the first song that she wrote with her main producer RedOne, is a club track that borrows its “gang chorus” from the hard rock of AC/DC. “I told him, I want to make pop music that my heavy metal friends will listen to,” she explained.

“Aside from her few piano ballads, which are like early 1970s Elton John, her dance music is pretty much on-the-money current Euro dance,” said her recent collaborator Adam Lambert in a separate interview. “But she’s a rock star in her mentality. [Her attitude is] like, ‘I hope this makes you look. I’m going to be subversive and out there because it makes me feel good and liberated to be that way.’ ”

It’s arguable that Gaga could only realize her artistic vision in the center of the pop mainstream. Her critical supporters laud her for reconnecting pop to other cultural forms and for revitalizing the stream of art-into-pop first opened up by bands like Roxy Music and the Patti Smith Group.

But she’s not alone in that effort. Kanye West played a gala at the Museum of Contemporary Art before she did; Beyoncé referenced Bob Fosse. Go a notch lower in visibility, as Gaga’s critics point out, and examples abound of rock and club kids with art connections, from Karen O to Alison Goldfrapp.

Gaga has done something more specific: She’s tapped into one of the primary obsessions of our age — the changing nature of the self in relation to technology, the ever-expanding media sphere, and that sense of always being in character and publicly visible that Gaga calls “the fame” — and made it her own obsession, the subject of her songs and the basis of her persona.

“Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves,” she said. “I guess what I am trying to do is take the monster and turn the monster into a fairy tale.”

That stars embody the social concerns of their age is a pop-culture truism. But only rarely does an artist dig beneath the dermis of our shared anxieties, exposing the liquid matter that runs through the shared fantasies and delusions of a particular moment.

“It’s kind of like a crusade in its own way,” she said. “Me embodying the position that I’m analyzing is the very thing that makes it so powerful.”

Owning her image

Since the release of “The Fame,” Lady Gaga has been uncovering new layers within her basic themes. At first she just seemed like the most pop savvy of the clever young people using club beats as a basis for music that could be both cerebral and cathartic — the way indie rockers used heavy guitars a generation before. It was easy to dismiss her as no more than a well-educated New York girl with a gift for pop hooks and self-marketing.

But then her public appearances began to not simply provoke but disturb. She made a video for her song “Paparazzi” that had her in gilded crutches and a leg brace. She turned that vision of crippled glamour even bloodier on the MTV Video Music Awards, an appearance she described as “my first truly original moment.”

She’s worn costumes that recast childhood icons like Kermit the Frog and Hello Kitty into ingénue’s pelts. (The Kermit dress was designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, who’d previously adorned Madonna in teddy bears; the kitty couture was the brainchild of Gaga’s main creative partner, Matthew “Matty Dada” Williams.) She’s painted her eyes to look like an anime heroine. In the climactic dance sequence from Monster Ball, she adorns herself in the black feathers of a vulture and the yards-long blond braids of a victimized princess.

“I had a different vision for it in the beginning. Dada thought it should be braided, and I said, ‘I never wear my hair braided.’ He said, ‘I know, but it’s so Rapunzel, and it’s something people deeply understand. And when you’re wearing sunglasses on a scaffolding piece with a giant alien dancing behind you, I promise you it’s not going to look like Rapunzel.’ ”

The hairpiece does look like something concocted by crafty kids in a basement; it reflects a key element of Gaga’s aesthetic, the do-it-yourself spirit that contrasts with her taste for million-dollar couture. She works with major designers such as Alexander McQueen, who created many of the Monster Ball costumes, but also with newcomers like Gary Card, who made the skeletal headgear she and her dancers wore on the AMAs.

“The great thing about Gaga is she always want to push for the most extreme option,” Card said. “She’s brave enough to let herself be a canvas for a designer to go and really express themselves. Nothing is off limits! With Rihanna and Beyoncé there is an end result of desirability and unattainable sexiness, whereas Gaga is a really interesting bridge between the desirable and the grotesque. She’s not at all worried about looking ridiculous or hideous; actually, I think she thrives off it.”

If Gaga is to maintain her distinctiveness, she’ll need to preserve her orientation toward art as kids putting on a show. It’s what connects her performance of fame to Andy Warhol’s vision instead of Simon Cowell’s. She’s been derided for constantly citing the Pop pioneer, but the connection is real.

Having gotten her start in the bohemian enclaves of downtown New York City, Gaga is deeply indebted to Warhol’s “Superstar”-oriented Factory scene and its aftermath, which produced drag performers like Candy Darling, artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and streetwise rock stars including Lou Reed and Patti Smith, who declared glamour accessible to anyone with a Polaroid camera, a glue gun or a cheap guitar.

“The idea is, you are your image, you are who you see yourself to be,” she said. “It’s iconography. Warhol and I both went to church when we were younger. That’s how I see things. I don’t want anyone to feel trapped by their own lives. That to me is more dangerous than anything.”

On fantasy island

In Gaga’s movie, she is both Andy and the Superstar. Warhol supported and exploited a coterie of outsiders who likely would never have emerged from their corners without his help. Gaga takes control but also shows herself losing it; she blurs the lines between self-realization and self-objectification, courting the dangers of full exposure for a generation of kids born with camcorders in their hands.

Though she talks nonstop about liberation, Gaga’s work abounds with images of violation and entrapment. In the 1980s, Madonna employed bondage imagery, and it felt sexual. Gaga does it, and it looks like it hurts.

She says she wants her fans to feel safe in expressing their imperfections. “I want women — and men — to feel empowered by a deeper and more psychotic part of themselves. The part they’re always trying desperately to hide. I want that to become something that they cherish.”

But what is this freakishness, which she hopes to nurture? In songs like “Poker Face” and the new “Speechless,” Gaga focuses on women as unreliable narrators, misunderstood or even unable to speak. When she presents herself as a cartoon character or a space alien, she explores old questions about gender, artifice and “reality” using the new language of social media, body modification and transgender sexuality.

These deep issues are her tools, as important to her art as the glitter and latex in which she shrouds herself. “If you’re on an island, stranded, and all you have is sticks and leaves and pineapples, you’re gonna make a boat out of sticks and leaves and pineapples,” she said. “I view glamour and celebrity life and these plastic assumptions as the pineapples. And I spend my career harvesting pineapples, and making pies and outfits and lipsticks that will free my fans from their stranded islands.”

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Lady GaGa’s Royal Variety Performance!

Her Ladyship met Her Majesty last night, as Lady Gaga was politely asked “what do you do?” by Queen Elizabeth at this year’s Royal Variety Performance in Blackpool. In a surreal fashionista nod to the monarch’s ancestor and namesake – but in a less flesh-flashing manner than is her norm of late.

Lady Gaga wore a red PVC dress complete with enormous ruff and puffed sleeves, together with some bizarre jewelled red eye shadow. Maintaining whatever dignity you can when playing piano suspended 20 feet above the ground, Gaga was ultra-careful in offering the Queen the deepest curtsey her outfit would allow, both after her performance and during the traditional face-to-face meeting all performers have with Her Majesty – she was also well-versed in knowing not to speak until spoken to and to address the Queen as “Ma’am.”

However, the US singer-songwriter, aka Steffani Germanotta, was specifically banned from performing in front of the Queen her now standard ’suicide’ stage routine of stabbing herself and releasing fake blood.

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ELLE Makes A Lady of Gaga

Vainstyle was anticipating the calm after the Gaga fashion storm and after a few recent hints, its finally here. A toned-down, but certainly fashion friendly Lady Gaga graces the cover of the newest ELLE Magazine. Gaga is seen in a simple black lace ensemble and allows her entire face to be exposed with very minimalist make-up. It’s even rumored that she has even had some cosmetic work done to her face.

On bodily reactions to stress: “I get all the symptoms of a pregnant woman. I get headaches, I get tired, I get blurred vision sometimes during a really intense session with [her creative team] the Haus.”

On a recurring theme in her work: “I feel that if I can show my demise artistically to the public, I can somehow cure my own legend. I can show you so you’re not looking for it. I’m dying for you on domestic television—here’s what it looks like, so no one has to wonder.”

On being a former waitress: “I was really good at it. I always got big tips. I always wore heels to work! I told everybody stories, and for customers on dates, I kept it romantic. It’s kind of like performing.”

On using her sexuality: “My album covers are not sexual at all, which was an issue at my record label. I fought for months, and I cried at meetings. They didn’t think the photos were commercial enough…The last thing a young woman needs is another picture of a sexy pop star writhing in sand, covered in grease, touching herself.”

On her romantic future: “In eight to 10 years, I want to have babies for my Dad to hold, grandkids. And I want to have a husband who loves and supports me, just the way anyone else does. I would never leave my career for a man right now, and I would never follow a man around.”

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Lady Gaga “LoveGame” Music Video

Lady Gaga - LoveGame Official Music Video!

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